The invention relates to systems and methods for diagnosing medical conditions, and more particularly, to systems and methods that provide information to a clinician during the diagnostic process and that generate and collect information during the diagnostic process to generate records for the patient""s medical history.
The process of diagnosing an illness or a disease typically involves recording the demographic information about the patient and documenting the findings (symptoms, physical signs and laboratory test results) that the patient is exhibiting. Together the demographic information and the finding information provide a patient profile. The diagnosing physician can compare the demographic information and the finding information of the patient against a listing of the common and descriptive findings for a particular disease, and can determine the likelihood that such a disease would be present in a patient having the information set forth in the profile.
Although, this process is quite simple in principle, in practice the task is actually quite demanding and somewhat of an art, with some doctors being notably better at the diagnostic process than others. There are several factors that complicate the diagnostic process. Firstly, some cases require the consideration of an almost overwhelming number of diseases, reactions and conditions. Secondly, for each disease, the clinician needs to know the symptoms and other findings that are indicative of that particular disease. Additionally, as there can be a considerable overlap of findings between two or more conditions, the clinician must understand which of the findings are particularly useful for making correct diagnosis.
Moreover, even if the clinician does have a strong understanding of the likely diseases and different relevant findings, the clinician must now know how to employ these findings and information in an efficient manner. The efficiency of the diagnostic procedure is of course important. Firstly, the likelihood of a successful treatment occurring often turns on how quickly a medical condition is diagnosed and treated. Moreover, today""s cost conscious health management organizations demand that clinicians employ the most cost-effective means for diagnosing a patient""s medical condition. Managed care organizations are particularly concerned that clinicians employ the most cost-effective and efficient laboratory testing when diagnosing a patient""s medical condition. These concerns are echoed by the medical insurance industry, including federal and state medical reimbursements programs for medical procedures. Accordingly, the diagnosing clinician often faces the problem of having to identify one or two select diagnostic tests to provide findings that can quickly distinguish between several candidate medical conditions to lead to a correct diagnosis of the medical condition afflicting the patient.
Given the complexity of the diagnostic process, and today""s emphasis on cost effective health care, a need exists in the medical community to aid clinicians in quickly and efficiently diagnosing a patient""s ailment. A further need exists for a system that provides a diagnosing clinician with the sufficient findings to competently and completely consider a plurality of likely medical diseases.
Other objects of the systems and methods described herein will, in part, be set forth below and in part, be obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art from the following description of certain illustrated embodiments.
The systems and methods described herein aid a clinician in the diagnostic process by providing the clinician with information about the available clinical procedures that most improve the clinician""s ability to reach a correct diagnosis. Specifically, the systems described herein include software tools that can process information about the patient, including age, sex, symptoms, and prior medical history, and information about the known findings associated with different possible medical conditions and, based on this information, rank the other findings that can be ascertained by the clinician to identify those findings that are most likely to disambiguate between the multiple candidate disease and lead to the correct diagnosis. To this end the methods and processes described herein include processes for determining which findings are most capable of leading expeditiously to a correct diagnosis. In one practice, the processes evaluate the usefulness of a particular finding by determining a quantitative value representative of how much the presence or absence of a finding affects the probability estimates for a set of known diseases, wherein the probability estimates are representative of the likelihood that a particular disease or condition is the proper diagnosis for the case under consideration.
More specifically, the processes described herein include a process for diagnosing a medical condition of a patient, that includes the acts of providing a plurality of candidate medical conditions, providing a plurality of findings, each of which is representative of clinical information that can be gathered about the patient""s condition, determining for each finding, a likelihood that a particular finding can disambiguate between said candidate medical conditions, and ranking the findings as a function of the likelihood that a finding can disambiguate between the plurality of medical conditions, whereby a treating clinician can be provided with useful information regarding the likelihood that a finding can lead to the identification of the target medical condition.
To further aid the clinician, the process can include the further act of weighting the likelihood that a finding can disambiguate between a plurality of medical conditions by a factor representative of an economic cost of obtaining the clinical information representative of the finding. This allows the clinician to determine if effective and inexpensive means are available for reaching the correct diagnosis. Similarly, the process can affect the ranking of findings by weighting the likelihood that a finding can disambiguate between a plurality of medical conditions by a factor representative of a possibility that a disease can be treated effectively. This will direct the clinician to explore diagnosis of more curable diseases and conditions before exploring the possibility that a patient is afflicted by an incurable disease.
To aid the clinician in efficiently collecting useful finding information, the processes described herein can also identify a group of findings that can be determined from a single clinical procedure, and determine a composite score representative of the likelihood that said group of findings can disambiguate between the plural candidate medical conditions. Additionally, the processes can select a plurality of finding that can be identified from a known battery of laboratory tests, and determine a composite score representative of the likelihood that the plurality of findings can disambiguate between the plural medical conditions.
The processes described herein can also provide information to the clinician for allowing the clinician to rule in or rule out certain diagnoses. To that end, the processes can allow a clinician to select one of said plural medical conditions, and determine for the selected medical condition the likelihood that a finding can identify the selected medical condition as the condition afflicting the patient, whereby the clinician can rule in or rule out the selected medical condition. Additionally, the processes can be employed for aiding a clinician in justifying the medical diagnosis reached. For example, the processes can allow for displaying for a patient a listing of findings determined to be present or absence for a patient, and displaying, for a selected medical condition, a set of probabilities each associated with a respective one of findings and each being representative of the likelihood that the respective finding is present in a patient having the selected medical condition, whereby the clinician is provided information for justifying a diagnosis.
To aid the clinician in getting authorization to perform a battery of tests, or any test that can detect the presence or absence of a particular finding, the processes described herein can include the acts of generating a data record representative of the likelihood a particular finding will disambiguate between plural medical conditions, and transmitting the data record to an authorization center for requesting authorization to perform the desired clinical procedure.